unlimited

T-Mobile is a bit strange in that it has two prepaid branches: T-Mobile prepaid and the newly-renamed Metro by T-Mobile. Alongside its name change, Metro introduced two new plans with unlimited LTE at $50 and $60. T-Mobile has just added a new prepaid $50/month unlimited LTE plan of its own, though it doesn't seem quite as appealing as Metro's.

Two years ago, T-Mobile announced it would only have one cellular plan moving forward - the 'ONE' plan. That didn't last long, as the ONE Plus plan became available a few months later, along with a slew of add-on packages. Now the carrier is throwing another option into the mix, called 'T-Mobile Essentials.'

I think we can all agree at this point that the term "unlimited" has become utterly meaningless in the context of phone plans. Most unlimited plans include at least a few odd limits, but Sprint's latest offerings are really impressive in how many limits they apply to "unlimited" service. The old Unlimited Freedom plan will soon be replaced by Unlimited Basic and Unlimited Plus.

Verizon announced not a second, but its third "unlimited" smartphone plan yesterday, and it goes to show just how meaningless the term has become in the US wireless industry. Verizon's new "above" unlimited plan (the tiers are "go," "beyond," and "above" for those of you playing aspirational-marketing-nonsense-vocabulary at home) is basically America's Most Red Carrier deciding it can cash in on heavy data users to the tune of an extra ten bucks, making it $95 a month.

The "above" plan raises the unlimited (but obviously not unlimited) data cap to 75GB from 22GB, the mobile hotspot allowance to 20GB from 15GB, and tosses in five "TravelPass" roaming days per month.

U.S. Cellular has never been one of the country's major carriers, but for many areas (especially rural regions), it's one of the top choices. The company's previous $70/month unlimited plan was in line with unlimited plans from the big four carriers, but now U.S. Cellular is undercutting the competition.

Back in August, Verizon split its unlimited data plan into three separate plans - Go Unlimited, Beyond Unlimited, and Business Unlimited. All three plans have limitations on video streaming, tethering, and international usage. But starting on January 25, Go Unlimited will include limited service to Mexico and Canada.

Project Fi was a great deal when it was first introduced, minus the fact that the only compatible phone was the Nexus 6. Now that carriers are re-introducing 'unlimited' plans, Project Fi's $10/GB pricing tier isn't quite as appealing as it once was. Fi has now introduced its own version of an unlimited plan, called 'Bill Protection.'

Instead of reducing prices, carriers have decided that bundling streaming services is the best way to sell unlimited data plans. T-Mobile recently started offering free Netflix access to ONE customers with two or more lines, and now Sprint has followed suit by adding Hulu access to its unlimited plan.

One of T-Mobile's big "uncarrier" moves was to offer international roaming data to most customers for free. However, Canada and Mexico were special cases where you'd get full-speed LTE data on most plans. There wasn't any special limit on that data, which was remarkably generous—too generous, it would seem. T-Mobile is rolling that feature back and limiting LTE to 5GB per month in those countries.

T-Mobile is all in on unlimited data plans—you can't even buy a traditional capped plan anymore. Oh, there are still limits, of course, but Tmo isn't alone there. However, T-Mobile is making one of its unlimited limits a bit less irksome. Unlimited users now have to use more data before the network starts slowing them down.